E‐products, E‐waste and the Basel Convention: Regulatory Challenges and Impossibilities of International Environmental Law

Abstract

Electronic waste is recognized as the fastest growing hazardous waste stream of the twenty‐first century. Because e‐waste streams contain highly valuable precious metals and other secondary resources as well as hazardous toxic substances, the issue of their regulation lies at a liminal space between products and wastes. This complex legal interface engages the distinct and sometimes contradictory international regimes of liberalized trade and environmental protection. With most global flows of e‐waste being treated by informal recycling industries in developing countries, and given the continued structural exclusion of these marginalized e‐waste recycling sectors from official waste governance paradigms, the globalization of e‐waste raises important environmental justice and North–South development issues. The present article examines the discussion of e‐waste within international environmental law. In particular, it assesses new guideline developments under the Basel Convention on Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Waste and their Disposal. It is argued that despite its overarching objectives in relation to human health and environmental protection, the Basel Convention and the newly adopted Technical Guidelines on E‐waste primarily ensure the continued circulation of obsolete electronic commodities in conditions that reproduce international externalities. The impossibility of this international environmental regime to foster any meaningful and authoritative notion of accountability over hazardous wastes that are generated through transboundary flows of ‘products’ inevitably limits its potential to curb the externalization of hazardous waste pollution to vulnerable populations who suffer the most acute health risks of global hi‐tech production, consumption and reproduction. In essence, the success of this international regime over ‘wastes’ depends very critically on its coupling with national legislative controls over ‘products’ and more importantly, necessitates serious reflection on the legal dimensions of the notion of sustainable consumption.